I know on more than one occasion you've said that most video games hold no appeal to you. I was wondering though, besides your co-venture with Chair Entertainment for Empire, would you ever consider writing a story specifically designed to become a game?
I ask because, with technology progressing as it has, the tools to create vivid games are now in the hands of developers. Graphics technology, coupled with multi-core processing, allows developers to create characters with incredibly life-like authenticity. From capturing minute mannerisms and facial expressions using new MoCap technology to rendering individual wrinkles and scars on a person's face, we can create believable, emotive characters that are ripe for telling an emotional story.
Take, for example, the game Indigo Prophecy. It was certainly rough around the edges, and the plot tapered off in quality near the very end, but it's won numerous awards for it's use of deep characters and an involving, dramatic human story of an ordinary guy trying to come to terms and understand his supernatural powers, and to deal with the guilt of murdering someone, even though he was literally unable to do otherwise.
Considering this, and the industry's enthusiastic response to a game attempting to create a cinematic story, wouldn't it be worth looking into? Games no longer have cheesy music, corny voice acting or unexpressive characters, so why not tap the tools and create something incredible? A truly interactive drama?
Just a thought. Feel free to speculate on it, people! Posts: 208 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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Ender's Game FPS and Bean RTS Grand Strategy game ftw.
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David Cage's work is interesting and important, but I don't think the greatest progress in video-game storytelling is going to come from games like Indigo Prophecy that try too hard to be interactive movies.
Still, though, when we've got Cage's team, and BioWare, and Obsidian, and Valve, and Big Blue Box, and countless other groups that make huge strides every year towards bringing interactive storytelling closer to its potential, what makes you think that bringing in writers from the traditional media is going to be a step forward?
It takes an incredible amount of mental retooling just to switch from playwright to novelist to screenwriter to TV showrunner and back again, and those are all well-established media with generations of time-honored experience to their credit.
Video games, on the other hand, are still very new. People who have worked on them for 30 years are only just starting to get a handle on their potential. Is a writer who is comfortable in another medium going to be able to jump right in and write a video game story that blows all the competition away?
Card has certainly done far better as a video game dialogue writer than most, because as an experienced playwright, he understands how to make a scene flow, how to actor-proof lines for cold readings in a sound booth, and how to cut a conversation down to the essentials.
But when it came to writing the story for Empire, Card deliberately stayed out of Chair's way. There are a few scenes in the book that are appropriate for a game, but mostly, there are a lot of gaps where the game scenes will be filled in later by Chair. That's because the kind of scene, and the kind of writing, that works well in a novel would be disastrous in a game, and vice-versa. So Card and Chair are each doing what they do best, and leaving the unfamiliar territory to the experts.
Anyway, I guess my point is, if you want interactive narratives to move forward and continue to get better at their own unique style of storytelling, you don't have to look outside the industry to find the people who are going to accomplish that for you. In fact, writers from outside the industry are far less likely to accomplish it than the designer-storytellers who have already been hammering on the problem for years.
But if you insist on this fruitless line of inquiry, then at least you picked the best traditional writer for the job Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I'll second Bioware and Valve as developers you'll probably find interesting, Hitoshi. Neverwinter Nights has a very compelling story (actually, many stories, depending upon your interaction with the it), and the most beautiful art I've seen in any game. And I'm sure you're familiar with Half Life 2. I've only written fan mail once in my life (not exactly proud of admitting it), and it was to Gabe Newell.
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I think Card is allowed to be not interested in certain things, like Hip Hop and video games and vitamin supplements. He'll touch on exceptions here and there, but no one is interested in everything. (I don't like Hip Hop either, but I did give Country music a try after a column of his. And I'm still not interested.)
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: And I'm sure you're familiar with Half Life 2. I've only written fan mail once in my life (not exactly proud of admitting it), and it was to Gabe Newell.
Funny you should mention that one. Valve hired Mark Laidlaw to write a story specifically for the game, and Valve did an amazing job in portraying the story in the game. But, at least in the Half-Life series, there's a bigger story than what is visible in the game; I've posted before on another forum a link to the entire backstory regarding the Combine and what happened before, during and after the events in the game.
Advent Rising was a great story concept, but the company that developed it made a rather weak game.
And, for the record, I've been to the Valve offices and have personally met Gabe Newell. He was just head of operations, and didn't have a whole lot to do with the game and storyline development. If you're going to send fan mail, send it to Yahn Bernier (Lead Developer of Half-Life) and Robin Walker (creator of the original Team Fortress).
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I had the feeling that Newell was not as involved in the actual development, but I was impressed with almost every facet of the game and wasn't sure who else I should send it to. Yahn Bernier would have been a good option, in retrospect.
But like I said, fanmail usually isn't my thing. It was a while ago that I sent it.
Could I get that link? I would be interested to see it.
Neat mod by the way Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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If you want "video" games with good stories, you should start with text adventures and see if you need to go any further. As they're all text, it's very easy for them to feel like stories; and since you can type in all sorts of commands, you can do a lot more (on a very high level) than you can in a standard video game.
Nearly all text adventures released today are freeware. Some good ones to start with that are playable online are Galatea, Photopia (play this one by typing commands into the line below the screen), The Dreamhold (features automatic hints for first-time players), and Metamorphoses. (The first two are much more stories than games.)
For real challenges, try Curses, Jigsaw, So Far, and Savoir Faire. (These are links to the games' entries in a giant review database of freeware text adventures.) But I didn't get very far in these games on my own, so they just made me feel bad about myself. Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Is a writer who is comfortable in another medium going to be able to jump right in and write a video game story that blows all the competition away?
It is certainly possible. Someone outside the industry is likely to not hold the same assumptions that those inside the industry already hold.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Assumptions like saving the big boss for the end of the level, for instance. I'd love to see Card bring denoument to the video game industry Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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HL2 techincally didn't have a "boss" at the end, at least not in the sense you're familiar with. It just had a guy that talked too much.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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